LOS ANGELES – Cardinal Roger Mahony, who retired with a tainted career after dodging criminal charges over how he handled pedophile priests, was stripped of duties Thursday by his successor as a judge ordered confidential church personnel files released.

The unprecedented move by Archbishop Jose Gomez came less than two weeks after other long-secret priest personnel records showed how Mahony worked with top aides to protect the Roman Catholic Church from the engulfing scandal.

One of those aides, Monsignor Thomas Curry, stepped down Thursday as auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles Archdiocese's Santa Barbara region. Gomez said Mahony, 76, would no longer have administrative or public duties in the diocese.

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading," Gomez said in a statement referring to 12,000 pages of files posted online by the church Thursday night just hours after a judge's order. "The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children."

The fallout was highly unusual and marks a dramatic shift from the days when members of the church hierarchy emerged largely unscathed despite the roles they played in covering up clergy sex abuse, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

"It's quite extraordinary. I don't think anything like this has happened before," Reese said. "It's showing that there are consequences now to mismanaging the sex-abuse crisis."

MOVING PROBLEM PRIESTS

Several of the documents released late Thursday echo recurring themes that emerged over the past decade in dioceses nationwide, where church leaders moved problem priests between parishes and didn't call the police.

In one instance, a draft of a plan with Mahony's name on it calls for sending a molester priest to his native Spain for a minimum of seven years, paying him $400 a month and offering health insurance. In return, the cardinal would agree to write the Vatican and ask them to cancel his excommunication.

It was unclear whether the proposed agreement was enacted with the Rev. Jose Ugarte, who had been reported to the archdiocese 20 years earlier by a physician for drugging and raping a boy in a hotel in Ensenada, his file shows.

"He has been sexually involved with three young men in addition to the original allegations," Curry, then Mahony's point person for dealing with suspected priests, wrote in 1993.

In another case, Mahony resisted turning over a list of altar boys to police who were investigating claims against a visiting Mexican priest who was later determined to have molested 26 boys during a 10-month stint in Los Angeles.

"We cannot give such a list for no cause whatsoever," he wrote on a January 1988 memo.

Mahony, who retired in 2011 after more than a quarter-century at the helm of the archdiocese, has publicly apologized for mistakes he made in dealing with priests who molested children.

He has survived three grand jury investigations and several depositions by civil attorneys representing people alleging abuse.

Retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney, center, enters the Bren Events Center at UC Irvine as part of the procession for the installment ceremony for Orange Diocese Bishop Kevin Vann in this file photo from Dec. 10. Rick Warren, top left, pastor of Saddleback Church, looks on. Mahony was relieved of his remaining public duties Thursday. LEONARD ORTIZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Cardinal Roger Mahony looks on as his successor, San Antonio Archbishop Jose Gomez, speaks during a news conference at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on April 6, 2010. Gomez, 58, took over the archdiocese of Los Angeles when Mahoney retired. KEVORK DJANSEZIAN, GETTY IMAGES
A Feb. 9, 2005, file photo shows Jose H. Gomez, now archbishop of the Los Angeles Diocese, greeting parishioners after an Ash Wednesday service at Mission San Jose in San Antonio. On Thursday, Gomez relieved retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony of his remaining duties on the same night the church released thousands more files on priest sexual abuse. ERIC GAY, AP

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